I said nothing.
The entire situation was bizarre.
I knew there was a secret buried beneath all this, a piece of the puzzle I was missing.
The secret was revealed on the day Jenna gave birth.
Silas called me, telling me Jenna had delivered and that I needed to come to the hospital to care for her.
I was stunned.
By my calculations, she was barely past the seven–month mark.
“Miss Jenna had an accidental fall,” Silas explained over the phone.
“The baby was born prematurely.”
“But why are you calling me?” I asked, confused,
“The Croft family has been taking care of her.”
After all this, her status should have been higher than ever.
Instead, Silas met me at the hospital and handed me a cashier’s check with a staggering number of zeros.
His smile was gone, replaced by something cold and final.
“This is for Miss Jenna’s nutritional expenses and emotional damages.”
My blood ran cold.
“What do you mean?”
His next words made the world spin.
“Mr. Croft is not keeping the child.
I was sure I had misheard him.
11:12 Thu, Jul 31
–
709
I was sure I had misheard him.
Or that the entire world had gone mad.
When Jenna was first pregnant, Donovan Croft had treated her like a precious, irreplaceab treasure.
It was as if he were infertile and her womb held his only heir.
Now the child was born, and he was tossing it aside like garbage.
I grabbed Silas’s sleeve, demanding an explanation.
He studied my face for a long moment, then sighed, as if deciding I deserved to know.
He told me Donovan Croft already had a child.
My mouth fell open.
I vaguely remembered a rumor from my past life.
That he’d had a child in college.
A child with leukemia, hidden away at the old Croft estate, never seen in public.
Most people thought the story was a fabrication.
I never imagined it was true.
“The child does have leukemia,” Silas confirmed.
“And his mother passed away.”
“For years, Mr. Croft has been searching for a bone marrow match.”
The pieces clicked into place with sickening clarity.
Her blood being drawn for a “routine check” before she was hired as a maid.
The security chief and housekeeper being so willing to “sell” Donovan’s specimen.
It was all a setup.
A trap.
After discovering Jenna’s blood type was a match, Donovan had orchestrated the entire
pregnancy.
